Colard Mansion

Colard Mansion ( * before 1440; † after 1484 ) was a Flemish booksellers, writers and printers of the 15th century.

Life

Mansion worked since 1454 as a bookseller in Bruges and was active at the same time as a writer, translator and manuscript dealer. He concluded contracts with its customers from the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie over the production of certain books and coordinated the various steps, such as writing the texts by hand, the ornament by incunabula and by the application of color and finally the binding.

Since 1474 Mansion used the new art of printing for the creation of the texts. From this time the first printed texts originated in English by William Caxton, who was probably dependent on Mansions printing press. Furthermore, in the Mansion first printed texts originated in French. Two of the today known 25 Prints Mansion were written in Latin.

The books were precious Mansions equipped by inserted after printing manuscripts. One of his books, the Ovide moralise contains woodcuts and the French translation of Boccaccio's De Casibus Virorum Illustrium and is the first book ever which contains engravings. Mansion also placed less voluminous books with a maximum of 20 to 30 pages. He is also known as a translator of texts from Latin into French, this includes Le dyalogue of the creatures, which was printed in 1482 by the Dutchman Gerard Leeu.

The customers of the books Mansions included, among others, Charles I de Croy and in 1482 Mary, widow of Louis I ( Ligny, St. Pol and Brienne ). The fate of the bookseller after May 1484, little is known, he probably twisted into the Picardy.

Famous Works

• Les Evangiles of quenouilles, by an anonymous poet, about 1480th
• La doctrine de bien vivre en ce monde, also called Donat Espirituel of Jean Gerson.